Along with possibly rugby, cricket is the forgotten sport of videogames. In a world of rapid-fire roster updates and wi-fi weather channel connectivity, cricket seems to have stopped to take a prolonged break for tea. Like a comfortable old sofa, it's been relegated to the summerhouse to make way for all the modern incidentals that we feel the need to clutter our lives with.

Even well into the PS2 era, the sport maintained a strong presence on consoles, with Codemasters' own Brian Lara endorsed efforts and EA's titles receiving regular releases. In recent years however, spiralling development costs put an end to all that, and like a Shane Warne and Graham Gooch hair loss advert, no matter how much fans tried to stay positive, it's hard to comb over something that's so obviously not there any more. In fact, if it wasn't for the game hosting one of the major sporting events of the year it's unlikely that the numbers would have added up again - and there are no prizes for guessing which two countries will see the majority, if not the entirety, of the publisher's marketing spend.

Such disappointments shouldn't be dwelt upon though, as Ashes Cricket 2009 is a good game, and not one that needs to be demeaned by inserting the word 'little' into the middle of that description. It's a title from a company that's well respected and experienced in the field and it plays a deep and challenging game of cricket, albeit one that deals so comprehensively with the sport's main mechanics that it highlights its own simplicities in other areas.

The main draw is, of course, the series of Pomms vs. Convicts face-offs for the world's worst suited trophy to be held aloft triumphantly. Bound to inspire more than a few impulse buys, the official content includes recreations of the five venues, team kits, player names and appearances and anticipated squads, although the prophetic powers of these certainly don't stretch to the panic button discussions of Marcus Trescothick and Mark Ramprakash currently taking place at the time of writing. While most people will initially make for this titular mode, behind it lie other competitive options, from the chess matches of Tests to the shoot-outs of Twenty20. Among these, it's the One Day Internationals that are the most malleable, allowing you to dictate their duration from a full fifty overs to a five over slog-fest; and Ashes also comes with a challenge mode, the now seemingly mandatory alternative feature of choice for all sports games, which as usual provides a pick and mix of tasks to complete, all based on historic moments from cricketing's past.

Before chancing your arm at these, or anything else, however, you're best advised to complete the Legends Coaching, where Ian Botham and Shane Warne guide you through a meticulous boot-camp on the intricacies of the gameplay, complete with appropriately sharp rebukes from Warne if you don't follow Sir Beefy's instructions. Due to its active rather than reactive nature and its more guided controls, bowling is easier to get to grips with than batting. Once a delivery type has been selected using the controller's right stick and face buttons, it's then simply a case of spending the limited time of your bowler's run up positioning the aiming reticule and applying any spin that's available, before hitting the desired face button again to hopefully stop the accuracy gauge in its smallest section to pinpoint the ball onto the exact spot you wanted. It may sound like a lot to accomplish, but the rhythm to movements quickly becomes second nature, and the main danger is a lazy reflex stopping the accuracy gauge too late and resulting in a no ball. While fast bowlers can come steaming in behind deliveries that cut and swing, the more deliberate spinners can twist and counter-twist the ball with corkscrew like rotations. It's enough for anyone at the crease to have to deal with, particularly as the art of batting in Ashes 2009 is a freer and more vague one.

Timing and footwork are key here, the former once again shown on a gauge, but this time one that you only have chance to consider once you've played your shot, and which moves so fast that a split second differentiates between cracking one off the meat of the bat and edging the ball onto your own stumps, or into the gleeful hands of a waiting slip fielder. The L1 and L2 buttons determine whether you play off the front or back foot, or risk advancing out of your ground down the wicket, while the type of shot itself - attacking, defensive or lofted - is once again decided by the face buttons, with shot direction controlled via the left stick. As is to be expected, top order batsmen are much more accurate at finding gaps in the field, whilst those who make up the tail frequently spray the ball around with all the precision of the National Lottery draw machine.

Just as with the real sport, patience, judgement and execution are essential for success, and the developers have even found a way to recreate the psychological war that quietly rages under the surface of the batter/bowler relationship by giving each a Confidence Bar that can fluctuate from timid to fearless, depending on factors such as missed shots and scoring rate. All of these different permutations help to fashion the tactical maze that cricket is all about, as bowlers try to lull, coax and frustrate batters into rash decisions, while batsmen try to establish their dominance of their crease.

By way of a counterbalance to all this detail, Ashes makes fielding as easy and simple as possible, reducing it to simply selecting which end to return the ball to and taking catches by hitting X when the game slows down time and the coloured circle around the ball flashes green. You can set the field if you so wish, but the game will also take care of this for you, and while the lack of participation may annoy some, the handing over of fielder movement to the AI and the removal of power and accuracy bars from throwing means that the developers have also eliminated many potential irritations.

The mind games and sledging that Ashes Cricket encourages are naturally only enhanced by having up to four people playing together in the same room, and little of this involvement is lost online, where a fully featured range of ranked and unranked matches are available; and to avoid making things too easy for batsmen, bowlers in all multiplayer games can select one type of delivery but then secretly change their selection at the end of their run up.

In terms of presentation, Ashes' standout feature is its inclusion of Hawkeye technology, which provides a range of colourfully presented stats, including batsmen's wagon wheels, bowlers' pitch maps - and, of course, its famous would it/wouldn't it have hit the stumps simulations. Apart from this however, things aren't so advanced. The match commentary quickly becomes repetitive, and while player animations are smooth enough, the graphics lack detail, with crowds in particular looking like they're on a daytrip from the PS2. The game also bowls you some nasty googlies in other areas. It does such a good job of reproducing the action that the times when you do encounter one of its quirks gain extra emphases, and primary amongst these is the imbalance in the way you take wickets against the computer. The phrase 'catches win matches' is one of the oldest clichés in the sport, but in Ashes Cricket nothing could be more appropriate, as dismissals by this method are much more common than all of the others put together, with LBWs in particular little more than things of myths and legend. Instances when the game prevents you from making easy run outs and the sometimes fickle nature of the confidence system also cause frustration, while off the field there is a distinct lack of teams; only eleven national and three custom sides are featured, meaning that the player and squad editors included are greatly needed, as only England and the Ozzies are officially licensed.

It would be easy to warble on for ages about the sound of leather on willow, polite rounds of applause, church bells ringing over a village green, Branston Pickle sandwiches and about a hundred other things that make up the quintessentially English cricketing experience, but Ashes Cricket 2009 is about much more than that. It evokes all these endearing images whilst also giving you the nimble footwork, surprising partnerships in the lower order and frustration when catches are put down that make up the nuances of the game. To some, cricket will always be more boring than a Geoffrey Boycott commentary on a Geoffrey Boycott innings [Guilty as charged! Ed] but while it does have its shortcomings, Ashes Cricket 2009 manages to combine the strangely therapeutic properties of the sport with the intensity of one of the most storied events in sports history, and that is a feat that would have left many other developers well and truly stumped.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).